Book Talks

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Monday, April 7 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books

Hold Me Down: Toward a Rhetoric of Feel

Ben Lauren, Chair and Associate Professor of Writing Studies

The Center for the Humanities invites you to the final Book Talk of the 2024-2025 academic year with Ben Lauren, Associate Professor and Chair of Writing Studies, who will present his ideas on the creative process of composing. In this unique take on a Book Talk, Ben will read excerpts from the liner notes and perform several of the songs from the album. 

In his album-monograph Hold Me Down: Toward a Rhetoric of Feel, Ben Lauren argues that rhetorical theory can help both formally and informally trained musicians compose songs. Rhetorical Feel, as Lauren explains it, is where an artist reflects on their reaction to a song’s melody, lyrics, and dynamics. Relying on feel as a creative-critical method of composing requires all writers to develop habits that allow them to attend to emergence in their writing process. In this unique take on a Book Talk, Ben will read excerpts from the liner notes and perform several of the songs from the album.

Ben Lauren is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing Studies and Director of the Co-Major in Innovation and Society at the University of Miami. His scholarly work focuses on the intersection of writing and design; rhetorical theory; and organizational, institutional, and community change. He is also a songwriter, best known for his work as singer/songwriter with the band No Address.

Monday, August 26 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

Henry Green, Professor of Religious Studies

Sephardi Voices: The Untold Expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands, by Henry Green & Richard Stursberg

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Join us at Books & Books in Coral Gables for an evening program about:

Sephardi Voices: The Untold Expulsion of Jews from Arab Lands by Henry Green & Richard Stursberg.

In the decades following the founding of Israel, close to a million Jews were forced from their ancestral homelands in the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. This story of state-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and political unrest is told with stunning photography and gripping first-hand accounts from survivors. They tell of violent persecution and daring midnight airlifts—but also of a world left behind, and new lives in new lands. This is a story of Jewish history, of a resilient people finding strength in the face of terrible injustice.

Henry Green is Professor of Religious Studies and the former Director of Judaic and Sephardic Studies at the University of Miami, Florida. He is the Founding Director of MOSAIC: the Jewish Museum of Florida, and of Sephardi Voices, an audiovisual digital archive of Arab Jews. He has served as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has given testimony to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in the United States as an advocate for the rights of those displaced. Professor Green is the author or co-author of four books, including Research in Action (education of at-risk populations in Israel); The Economic and Social Origins of Gnosticism (Jewish origins from a sociological perspective); Mosaic: Jewish Life in Florida; and Gesher Vakesher, Bridges and Bonds: The Life of Leon Kronish (the Israelization of American Jewry and the story of Jewish Miami) and many articles. Currently, Professor Green is the International Director of Sephardi Voices.  The project’s mission is to record, document and preserve the memories of Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews, to make them digitally accessible similar to the Shoah/Holocaust project, and to immortalize the legacy that stretches back to the prophet Jeremiah, the writings of the Talmud and Maimonides.

Monday, September 16 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

The Burden-Sharing Dilemma: Coercive Diplomacy in US Alliance Politics

Brian D. Blankenship, Assistant Professor of Political Science

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Please join the Center for the Humanities at Books & Books for a Book Talk by Professor Brian Blankenship. 

The Burden-Sharing Dilemma examines the conditions under which the United States is willing and able to pressure its allies to assume more responsibility for their own defense. The United States has a mixed track record of encouraging allied burden-sharing―while it has succeeded or failed in some cases, it has declined to do so at all in others. This variation, Brian D. Blankenship argues, is because the United States tailors its burden-sharing pressure in accordance with two competing priorities: conserving its own resources and preserving influence in its alliances. Although burden-sharing enables great power patrons like the United States to lower alliance costs, it also empowers allies to resist patron influence.  

Blankenship identifies three factors that determine the severity of this burden-sharing dilemma and how it is managed: the latent military power of allies, the shared external threat environment, and the level of a patron's resource constraints. Through case studies of US alliances formed during the Cold War, he shows that a patron can mitigate the dilemma by combining assurances of protection with threats of abandonment and by exercising discretion in its burden-sharing pressure.  

Blankenship's findings dismantle assumptions that burden-sharing is always desirable but difficult to obtain. Patrons, as the book reveals, can in fact be reluctant to seek burden-sharing, and attempts to pass defense costs to allies can often be successful. At a time when skepticism of alliance benefits remains high and global power shifts threaten longstanding pacts, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma recalls and reconceives the value of burden-sharing and alliances. 

Brian Blankenship is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Miami. He joined the department in the fall of 2019. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of international relations, international security, and international cooperation, with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the politics of military alliances. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University in May 2018 and his B.A. in Political Science from Indiana University, Bloomington, in May 2012. 

Monday, October 7 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World

Traci Ardren, Professor of Anthropology

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Join us to learn about the book Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World, which introduces readers to a range of people who lived during the Classic period (200–800 CE) of Maya civilization. Traci Ardren here reconstructs the individual experiences of Maya people across all social arenas and experiences, including less-studied populations, such as elders, children, and non-gender binary people. Putting people, rather than objects, at the heart of her narrative, she examines the daily activities of a small rural household of farmers and artists, hunting and bee-keeping rituals, and the bustling activities of the urban marketplace. Ardren bases her study on up-to-date and diverse sources and approaches, including archaeology, art history, epigraphy, and ethnography. Her volume reveals the stories of ancient Maya people and also shows the relevance of those stories today. Ardren’s engaging monograph Everyday Life in the Classic Maya World offers readers at all levels a view into the amazing accomplishments of a culture that continues to fascinate. 

Traci Ardren is an anthropological archaeologist interested in New World prehistoric cultures. Her research focuses on issues of identity and other forms of symbolic representation in the archaeological record, especially the ways in which differences are explained through gender. Traci directs the Matecumbe Chiefdom Project, which looks at the political organization and environmental adaptation of the pre-Hispanic occupants of the Florida Keys. She is also co-director of the Proyecto de Interacción Política del Centro de Yucatán, at the Classic Maya site of Yaxuna, in Yucatan, Mexico where she is investigating how culinary tourism and modern foodways intersect and how ancient road systems allowed for the flow of information and ideas. As Consulting Curator for Mesoamerican Art, Traci has curated a number of exhibits at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, including most recently, Kay Pacha: Reciprocity with the Natural World in the Ancient Art of the Andes in 2016. She grew up in and around the Ringling Museum of Art and holds a lifelong fascination with the many ways in which objects convey our wants and needs. 

Monday, October 21 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies

Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States

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Join us to learn about the book Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States. In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Nwokocha reveals in this richly textured book, that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material aesthetics, bodily adornment, and spirit possession. Nwokocha spent more than a decade observing Vodou ceremonies from Montreal and New York to Miami and Port-au-Prince. She engaged particularly with a Haitian practitioner and former fashion designer, Manbo Maude, who presided over Vodou temples in Mattapan, Massachusetts, and Jacmel, Haiti. With vivid description and nuanced analysis, Nwokocha shows how Manbo Maude's use of dress and production of ritual garments are key to serving Black gods, illuminating a larger transnational economy of fashion and spiritual exchange. This innovative book centers on fashion and other forms of self-presentation, showing how religion is a multi sensorial experience of engagement with what the gods want and demand from worshippers. Nwokocha's ethnographic work challenges and enriches readers' understandings not only of Vodou and its place in Black religious experience but also of religion's entanglements with gender and sexuality, race, and the material and spiritual realms.

Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha is an Assistant Professor at the University of Miami. She is a scholar of Africana religions with expertise in the ethnographic study of Vodou in Haiti and the Haitian diaspora. Her research is grounded in gender and sexuality studies, visual and material culture and Africana Studies. She obtained a Ph.D. in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Africana studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a Master’s degree in Theological studies from Harvard Divinity School, and a Bachelor’s degree in Black studies and Feminist studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Nwokocha’s work has been featured in the Journal of Haitian Studies, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Reading Religion, and Women Studies Quarterly. Nwokocha is currently working on her second book project tentatively entitled: “‘Tell My Spirit’: Black Queer Women in Haitian Vodou,” which investigates Black queer women’s interactions with Haitian Vodou divinities, their performance of ritual work, and their formation of religious communities in multiple locations including Montréal, Miami, Havana, Paris, Brooklyn NY, and Northern California.

Monday, December 2 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

Logan J. Connors, Professor and Chair of Modern Languages and Literatures

Theater, War, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Empire

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Theater, War, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Empire is the first study of French theater and war at a time of global revolutions, colonial violence, and radical social transformation. Analyzing France and its largest Caribbean colony (Saint-Domingue), and spanning the Old Regime and Revolution, Logan Connors presents an ambitious, richly interdisciplinary argument, grounded in theater and performance studies, literary analysis of drama, and cultural, military, and gender history. Demonstrating how war and soldiering catalyzed new drama types and fostered theater's expansion into France's geographical and social peripheries, the study also shows how theater emerged as a dynamic space in which military practices could be re-imagined. This major scholarly intervention provides unparalleled insight into theater's engagement with international and domestic war efforts during a transformational period in global history.

Logan J. Connors is Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures. At UM, he co-convenes the Interdisciplinary Research Group in Theatre & Performance Studies, and he was recently named Cooper Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of three monographs and has published over thirty peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles in venues across North America and Europe. He researches French literature and theatrical performance from 1650 to 1815 as well as topics in theatre and performance studies, the history of the emotions, colonial Caribbean studies, and comparative revolution studies. He teaches French and Francophone Literatures from the medieval period to the present as well as graduate seminars on performance studies and professionalization.

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Monday, February 10 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books

Catherine L. Newell, Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Please join the Center for the Humanities for an evening with Catherine Newell as she explores how individuals internalize scientific knowledge regarding health and diet, and then incorporate that information into their lives as the basis of a spiritual practice. While on one level Food Faiths explores how food, health, and diet can be a source of personal fulfillment, on another level this book illustrates how science and religion can become part of an individual’s spiritual life.

Catherine L. Newell is a scholar of religion and science, focusing on the intersection of scientific knowledge and religious belief. Her research examines how various religious traditions engage with scientific concepts, particularly in areas such as bioethics, environmentalism, and the history of medicine. Newell's work – including her books Destined for the Stars (U of Pittsburgh 2019) and Food Faiths (Lexington 2023) – explores the historical and contemporary interactions between science and religion, emphasizing both conflict and cooperation with particular emphasis on how science, spirituality, religion, and ethics can work together to address pressing global challenges.

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Monday, March 24 @ 6:30pm

Book Talk @ Books & Books, Coral Gables

Becoming Object: The Sociopolitics of the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection

Pamela Geller, Professor of Anthropology, University of Miami

Join the Center for the Humanities at Books & Books in Coral Gables for a Book Talk by Professor Pamela Geller about her recently published book, Becoming Object: The Sociopolitics of the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection (2024).

This book considers the vast collection of skulls amassed by Samuel Morton in the first half of the nineteenth century. Craniometric studies undertaken by this Philadelphia physician and natural historian, as previous writers have noted, advanced scientific racism. In Becoming Object, Pamela Geller shows that while the characterization is accurate, it is also oversimplified. Geller uses a biohistoric approach, which examines skeletal remains and archival sources, to take a close look at the times in which Morton lived, his work, and its complicated legacy. 

Pamela L. Geller is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Miami. Over the years, she has conducted fieldwork in Hawaii, Belize, Honduras, Perú, and Haiti. Her intellectual interests include archaeology and bioarchaeology, feminist and queer studies, materiality of identity, the sociopolitics of the past, and bioethics. Based on her research, she has authored several books: The Bioarchaeology of Social-Sexual Lives (2017), Theorizing Bioarchaeology (2021), and Becoming Object: The Sociopolitics of the Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection (2024). Edited volumes include Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future (2006) and The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology (2025).